From Postmodern TVSeries to UGCs: A multimodal analysis MoM: Multimodality on the Move Travelling Workshops ilaria.moschini@unifi.it
Scope of the seminar 1. Decode and encode some kinds of Digital Artefacts Linguistic code (English language) Other semiotic codes Discursive practices! 2. Become familiar with a Toolkit to work with such Artefacts Analytical Tools Technical terminology and jargon Multimodality (see Reading List)
Why multimodality? This interdisciplinary approach anchors socio-cultural analysis to solid bases of linguistic and semiotic analysis Cultural Level! Culture: set of semiotic systems, a set of systems of meaning, all of which interrelate (Halliday and Hasan 1985, 4) Textual Level! Semiotic systems: system[s] of meanings that constitute the reality of the culture, [ ] the higher level stratum to which language is related (Halliday 1978, 123)
Digital artefacts From User Generated Contents (UGCs) To Fan Generated Contents
What is a Fan? Fan: a person who has a strong interest in or admiration for a particular sport, art form or famous person. It is the abbreviation of FANATIC - late 19th century term (originally US) Fanatic: a person with an obsessive singleminded interest and enthusiasm for a particular activity or cultural object. It is a mid 16th cent. Term from Latin fanaticus of a temple, inspired by a god, from fanum temple. The adjective originally described behaviour that might result from possession by a god or a demon.
Fan generated A Fan-fiction is a broadly defined fan labor term for stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fan_fiction A Song-fic is a fan-fiction interspersed with the lyrics of a relevant song. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/songfic A Fan-vid is a music video produced by intercutting clips of a movie or television show set to a particular song. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fanvid
Henry Jenkins, TED Talk, 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afclka0xrlw
New kind of relationships? New kind of language?
Intimate strangers (Gee and Hayes 2011) Language is both an information and a social tool Digital media have greatly changed the nature of strong and weak ties. People can be strangers and intimates at the same time. Published on Sep 18, 2012 Watch it in HD, please!!!!! When I heard this song by "Journey" I thought it was perfect for Damon and Elena and when I found the version of Mariah Carey I decided to make the video. Those words seem to be the thoughts of Elena! :) I hope with all my heart that you'll like my job! W Delena! forever
Fan textual and hermeneutic practices Such fan artefacts integrate the hermeneutic tradition of fan communities with postmodern diegetic and editing style. UGCs re-mediate and re-signify original material through the use of a range of discursive strategies such as imitation, repetition, modification and parody (Leppänen 2011)
A good fanvid is one that is able to render the true spirit of the series or of its characters following a hermeneutic tradition dating back to early s c i e n c e fi c t i o n f a n d o m s (Coppa, 2008).!!
1980s: videotape recorders fostered the spreading of fan videos stemming from the tradition of slideshows projected during fan conventions. TV footages + Music as a comment Fan videos differ from professional music videos because their emphasis is on the visual component, while in MTV videos, the leading semiotic code is music (Coppa, 2008).!
!! Fan-Vid Music video Collage of Images Song!! Song-Fic Story Characters/setting Music/lyrics Digital Platforms Meta-textual instantiation of fan-generated artefacts
[ ] When all you got to keep is strong Move along, move along like I know ya do And even when your hope is gone Move along, move along just to make it through A Supernatural Music Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vif_ndbjfi)
[ ] When all you got to keep is strong Move along, move along like I know you do And even when your hope is gone Move along, move along just to make it through Move along (Go on, go on, go on, go on) When everything is wrong we move along (Go on, go on, go on, go on) When everything is wrong, we move along Along, along, along [ ] Move Along, All American Rejects
DIGITAL CO-TEXT: Encoder s Metatext
DIGITAL CO-TEXT: Receivers Feedbacks and Encoder s Answers
Memories, A Supernatural SongFic (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5327170/)
SongFics for Damon and Elena (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7206958/2/)
Main semiotic strategies 1. Intertextuality 2. Resemiotization 3. MTV-inspired editing 4. Use of music: lyrics as figure
Intertextuality Horizontal intertextuality (Kristeva 1986), or what Fairclough (1992) calls manifest intertextuality, is the explicit quotation of a text within another text. Vertical intertextuality (Kristeva 1986), or constitutive intertextuality (1992: 85), refers to the merging of prior texts into new texts which may assimilate, contradict, or ironically echo them.
Resemiotization Resemiotization: how meaning making shifts from context to context, from practice to practice, or from one stage of a practice to the next (Iedema 2003, 41). CSI Miami, 2002-2012
MTV Style editing Celebration of pace and emotions/ abundant intertextual citations/ disjunctive sequences/ use of music
MTV Inspired use of music Use of hits instead of original themes; Foregrounding of the musical comment; Focus on both melodies and lyrics. Miami Vice, 1984
Sound perspective Figure: the most important sound, the sound that the listener must identify with and/or react to and/or act upon Ground: a sound still part of the listener s social world, but only in a minor and less involved way Field: a sound treated as existing not in the listener s social world, but in his or her physical world Van Leeuwen, 1999
CSI Miami, Season 3, episode 1 The Lost Son
Assignment guidelines Final outputs: a UGC a contextualising document a brief multimodal analysis
Create a fanvid/songfic (phase 1) Contextualise (phase 2) Analyse/Explain (phase 3) FanVid: Create a video with a videoediting software, you can use the Supernatural Music Video as a model. http://youtu.be/6vif_ndbjfi SongFic: Write a short SongFic (minimum 500 words - excluding quotations), you c a n u s e M e m o r i e s, A Supernatural SongFic as a model. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5327170/ Write a short presentation of your UGC, as if you were posting it on one of t h e d i g i t a l p l a t forms (YouTube or Fanfiction.net). Try to reproduce the same kind of language used in the models. Provide a short compendium of the shared knowledge necessary to decode your U G C ( u s u a l l y t h e s e messages are implicitly a d d r e s s e d t o h i g h l y specialized communities). 1. W h a t i s t h e m a i n communicative purpose of your text? 2. What are the different modes selected to create your UGC? Why you opted for them? 3. How do the chosen semiotic resources create meaning (use the categories from the reading list)? 4. Analyse the micro and/or m a c r o r e s e m i o t i z a t i o n processes we may find in our text (if any). 5. How does the combination of the different modes respect the discursive practices of the most relevant community?
Thank you! SUBMIT YOUR TEXT ilaria.moschini@unifi.it
Video Editing Software http://www.techradar.com/news/software/ applications/best-free-video-editing- software-9-top-programs-you-should- download-1136264